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And just what is our Dutch government giving back to the NSA? I'm pretty sure it's not fresh Dutch cabbages.
The Dragnet is apparently global. How long until someone gets arrested just for blogging negatively about a politician? A banker? A NSA employee?
This is an old, old cycle and marks the start of the end of an empire. Rome, Arabia and many others show this trend. Humans can and will conspire against each other in an ever growing bid for power until the masses once again have to overthrow the few. Only thing is, we can't win with pitchforks anymore, we need tanks and choppers. And they're decidedly harder to come by.

Information sharing is built into the universe, and so is copying of patterns. Atoms and molecules share electrons in predictable ways, cells communicate with each other, living entities communicate and share in incredibly diverse and complex ways; and once "the cat is out of the bag" it's almost impossible to get it back in. Streisand effects ad nauseum. The war living things wage against each other on so many levels - for example, viruses versus our immune systems - are also a facet of this interaction. We exist in an environment where sharing and communication is fundamental and everything influences everything else in myriad, complex ways. Making something totally secure - in other words, preventing it from interacting with its environment - hence is utterly impossible, or at the very least the amount of energy required to secure something is immense and the result is always imperfect.

Goes for plagiairism as well. DNA copies itself, kids copy their parents, we copy habits and patterns from each other hundreds of times every day. It's part of our processes for optimalisation and they're also intrinsic to the universe. Thus, things like copyright are also doomed to fail. Here, too, the amount of energy required is huge.

You can do one of two things:- Find the temp folder where Skype downloads its new copy, find out what name it gives the file, and replace it with a 2.8 version, then remove wheel rights so it can't replace it- adjust your hosts file so that Skype can't auto-update. Unfortunately I don't know what the updater connects to.. time to dust off your favorite network scanning apps.

On the side, I think we all would do well to keep bombing Skype support with mails that we see abolsutely no reason to switch to the bloated leviathan with the useless interface adustments and would greatly appreciate it if they would at least introduce a "classic" mode.

Some people can happily read through a list and pick out the ideas whilst laughing at the insults and caustic trolling, others get frustrated by content and end up dejected. If you're the latter type, you're probably best outsourcing it or leaving it be. But there's much to be said for communicating with your community, and as long as you remember that for every IQ 120 there's an IQ 80 out there - all, unfortunately, still allowed behind a computer - then it becomes easier to shrug it off. Besides, it's YOUR project. If they don't like it they can write their own and some people are just fashionably frustrated.

Very true.. the only thing we can to is Streisand Effect it as much as possible to help slap Facebook in the face. Maybe even set up a dedicated group resenting this move. Who knows, they might get the point. But it looks like we're seeing Microsoft's grubby little fingers in FB policy again.

Look around, there's plenty of things to do. Write your MP's. Join our "We need 5m people to prevent the labels killing internet freedom with ACTA" Facebook group. (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=213704134963) Join your local political party and yell at the town meeting that it pisses you off. Tell your friends. Only by sitting on your ass do you achieve your aforementioned goal.

We SHOULD be against any form of copyright protection on principle. It goes against nature (copying is natural) and hence will require LOADS of energy to enforce - from policy makers, judges, and cops to sysadmins and users. Get rid of it; there's plenty of better ways to get this done. Open source collaboration is one, alternate business models are another. The record companies have already been made superfluous by these developments and they know it, but they're doing their damnedest to become tyrants rather than adjust to life's flux.

Good point. I certainly hope not. Copyright is already problematic in that copying is built into nature, so going against it is swimming upriver - they're better off going with either a pledge-money-for-band-X's-new-album system or else lowering prices so far that downloading illegally just doesn't make sense anymore (especially if you can get it automatically sorted into the right folders with ID3 tags just they way you want 'em). Lower prices to 10c / song and I'll immediately spend $200. Add the right to re-download whenever you want and you've got a business model. Although on a practical note, there's no reason bands can't do tat themselves. There's plenty of platforms available for it.

On the side: There's a Facebook group I started in the hope to raise awareness, with the ultimate goal being to petition / lobby governments. Feel free to join, it's called We need 5m people to prevent the labels killing internet freedom with ACTA.

If it really bothers you, either start looking for another job - or join them in slacking. But be prepared to log all your hours - and those of your colleagues - so that when the inevitable gripe comes you can show that you're more productive than your colleagues, as endorsed by management. That's no way to really run a company (normal for governments though). I'm guessing they're in a segment where there isn't much competition. Once that heats up they won't know how to get into gear on time, and will either need an interim manager that wipes away the crusty crap or they'll go belly up.

It's an annoying fix to be in (although on the positive side, people in those types of organisations are usually far less stressed out, and having been burned out myself I know that's a BIG plus) and I guess you just have to choose what you want from your work and out of life in general. Some focus on career, others work for money and get enjoyment from family or sports or hobbies or whatever.

Heh.. did everyone have such high expectations of it then? We played AvP2 over our LAN quite a bit, for the simple fun of running over walls and dropping on unsuspecting marines. There was also an Survivor variant where you all start as marines and have to shoot each other, then after that you have to team up since everyone who dies becomes a (conistently respawning) alien. Sitting in the end of a box tunnel with aliens running towards you in dim lighting and ever-increasing numbers with the radar's beep-beep really sets an atmosphere. Longest survivor wins:P

But, indeed, the alien and pred single player campaigns were trash. It was only ever fun in multiplayer / online. I don't expect it to get an 8/1- rating or higher, 6/10 is fine by me as long as they don't screw it up. I know what I'm getting.

You know, that's a VERY strong point. I've been planning the same thing. We currently manage several server farms in Europe, so it would be ideal to live in N-Z and manage them remotely - work hours there are nighttime here, so server management doesn't bug users - but I'm not going to move down there if there's a chance some employee fucknut decides to download a few seasons of House and snowballs our internet connection. This is NOT a good idea for their economy.